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    Worrying (and the kanchukas)

    ByElizabeth

    This morning, woken by the purring cat from an anxious dream in which I was not doing enough to make things better (I am not making this up), my first thoughts were of escalating war in Afghanistan and deepening economic crisis at home.  It felt almost strange and abstract to be worrying about these things from my warm comfortable bed.

    I think worrying can have a positive place in our lives.  If we just get worried or anxious about things and get trapped in not doing or growing or reaching (both inward and outward) for a sense of connection and spirit, then worrying will cloak or limit us.  If we recognize worries as showing us limitations, then we can use them to grow and change and spur us to action.

    After the 25 tattvas describing the physical world and our being and understanding of the world that correspond in both the classical and Kashmir Shaivist systems, are Kashmir Shaivism’s six kanchukas — cloakings or coverings.  The kanchukas are niyati (limitation of place), kaala (limitation of time), raaga ( attachment), vidya (limitation of knowledge), kalaa (limitation of action), maya (illusion of individuality/manifestation).

    From a tantric perspective, experiencing ourselves as thinking, individual beings in the manifest world, constrained by time and space, only binds us if we think that is all we are.  If we get completely entangled in these constraints, then our sense of spirit is cloaked, just as if we get stuck in worrying, instead of using worries as a spur to work for change, we become miserable.

    I meditate and practice asana, as taught by my teachers, to reveal the restraints of physical being as only part of my being.  Spiritual practice can serve to enable us to experience freedom of heart and mind, to bathe in the bliss of the essence of ourselves that is universal and unconstrained by the limitations of individual manifestation.  The point of these practices not to escape our individual selves or to gratify them (that would still be “cloaked”), but to find the strength and stability to serve better and to work for a world in which all beings have an equal chance to seek the spirit and experience the bliss of connection.

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    A Lesson In Making Dumplings

    ByElizabeth

    Last Monday I had the honor and delight to be invited to a multigenerational dinner of homemade dumplings at a neighbor’s house.

    I was told it was customary for guests to shape a share of the dumplings; the hosts do everything else. As I have not grown up making dumplings as part of group family activity, that meant I needed first to be shown what to do with the already made dough and filling.

    Skills used to make homemade noodles, tortillas, and pizza helped make dumpling shaping an accessible activity. It was tricky at first. Two people were showing me two different ways, which was somewhat confusing in an enjoyable way, and helped emphasize that for friendly dumpling making, ultimately, everyone needs to find their own method that works for them. Also, as with many hand skills, because it was the first first time I was being shown, I was simultaneously transposing it from right to left-handed.

    It only took two tries to get a dumpling that wouldn’t explode in the pot and lose its filling. It took several more to make one that had nice pleats and blended in with the rest.

    We had an interesting discussion about the difference between learning by eating several variations and then reading several recipes and then trying to replicate a version that resembled what I had eaten prepared by someone who learned from childhood as part of a multigenerational group process.

    I have long contemplated, and continue to do so, how my comfort in learning anything from a book and then seeing if I can do it or something like it, has shaped my meditation and movement practices.

    It’s pretty easy to see which dumplings I made. No difference in taste. I was also happy to contribute garlic chives from the garden.

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    What If?–Part II

    ByElizabeth

    Yesterday I asked about setting an intention to be blissful in every thing we do for a day. Having the intention is a good start (I might not even have thought of such an intention without my yoga practice). What I really want is to be able to manifest that intention. For me, I know that it is important for me to live more consciously and with more subtle discrimination (viveka) if I am to come close to living such intention.
    A rare few live in bliss without effort. For the rest of us, that is why we have the practices. So we can practice moving into and resting in bliss.

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